Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

the memory of destructive struggles and the close proximity of the totalitarian threat, whether in the immediate past or just across a border, helped focus the attention of German and Austrian Social Democrats—like Italian Communists—on the virtues of compromise. Britain’s Labour Party had no such nightmares to exorcise. It was also, like its Belgian (and Dutch) counterparts in this respect, from its origins a labour movement rather than a socialist party, motivated above all by the concerns (and cash) of its trade union affiliates. It was thus less ideological—but more blinkered. If asked, Labour Party spokesmen would readily accede to the general objectives of continental European Social Democrats; but their own interests were much more practical and parochial. Precisely because of the built-in stability of British (or at least English) political culture, and thanks to its long-established—albeit shrinking—working-class base, the Labour Party showed little interest in the innovative settlements that had shaped the Scandinavian and German-speaking welfare states. Instead, the British compromise was characterized by demand-manipulating fiscal policy and costly universal social provisions, supported by sharply progressive taxation and a large nationalized sector, and set against a background of unstable and historically adversarial industrial relations. Except for the Labourite emphasis on the intrinsic virtues of nationalization, these ad hoc arrangements were largely supp...